Golden Were Thine Arms
by ToTheEndsOfTheEarth12369
Summary: Thrust into a world of monsters and heroes, Spencer struggles to find her place in a world where worth is claimed or unclaimed. But what happens when the line between heroes and monsters blur, and thousands of years history seems to unravel between the gods fingers? OC
1. Chapter 1

**All Rights Reserved**

 **My attempt to beat the writers block**

There is a little finch that has been following their bus all the way from Birmingham, and for the first time Spenser realizes that the finch is the color of clouds. The perfect white is marred by no dirt or blemishes, not even his tiny beak has any sort of orange or brown, his feet have no color. Spenser thought for a moment that she had gone color blind, but every other color on the bus seemed enhanced in the dripping heat, and she swears she's seen that little bird before.

Spenser looked away and decided to ignore it. The bus is on a bumpy road that makes it sway back and forth the closer they get to West Virginia. The bus smells like dirty socks and aftershave, the driver is on the last leg of the race-so to speak-with his wrinkles flapping in the wind from the open window. Most of the bus is filled with some after-the-fact hippies, their voices mingling to make some horrible impression of Doc Watson, the word 'heaven' switched to 'nirvana'. Spenser vows that next time she's going to take some earplugs traveling with her.

"Hey, kid," One of the passengers behind her said, flipping stringy hair out of his dazed eyes, "You got anything to drink?"

"No," she answers.

The guy laughs to himself, "Dude, cottonmouth sucks."

The bus rolled to a stop at another bus station, this one only four Plexiglas slabs held together by metal. The bench under it had a very uncomfortable looking red cushion on it, which has been weathered down from exposure. Most the bus stations from Alabama had at least a bathroom, but these thick back woods offered no one that sort of luxury. Spenser was use to using trees.

Three kids stand when the bus stops fully. There is a boy fiddling with the straps of his backpack, maybe eight or nine, with thick black lashes over beautiful blue eyes, his hair cut short and bright blonde, his face with a strong jaw that will grow to show cheekbones high, when he loses the baby fat. The second one has an arm around that little kids shoulders, about twelve, a year older than Spenser. She is the only girl of the group, with thick brown hair and eyes the color of emeralds, studying the bus critically with a worried stare-almost obnoxiously beautiful, like she isn't trying to hide it or enhance it. The third was standing and leaning against the Plexiglas as if trying to fain nonchalant-ness, a scrawny older kid with acne scars and a thick red cap covering bushy brown curls. His brown eyes dart back and forth up the road, like he's nervous or waiting for something.

Spenser immediately turns away when she realizes that the little finch has perched itself on top of the bus station.

She sinks farther into her seat. She has been on busses with other kids who travel alone before, but this time sends a chill up her spine. It's something about the tension in their backs. The flicking of their eyes, maybe. She's seen those kinds of kids at the CAFO before, sunken eyes, waiting for something in the way people do in horror films. She knows runaways pretty well too, when you live in the middle of the forest on the boarder of states there are always kids who stumble in, wanting to know the way to New York City.

Spenser always shows them the way. They share a kinship, after all.

The scrawny older kid boards the bus first, and freezes. His eyes dart towards all the passengers, and Spenser tries to seem inconspicuous against the window. But it was pretty obvious she's watching. And it's pretty obvious everyone else is watching, except for cottonmouth in the seat behind her, who has cranked up his volume singing Billy Joel.

After a moment, the kid kept moving, followed by the other two. The two settled together across from Spenser on the sweating grey plastic, and the older kid lands heavily in the seat next to her. He smells like a carpet store when it's humid, almost like a horse or pack animal. Maybe he has been near a barn, it's not unusual in these parts.

The bus starts again with a lurch. All around them, the air turns rather cold and tense. It's like the kids brought with them danger, the hair raising kind. Spenser gets the impression that she should get off the bus, and fast, before something happens, and it just so happens that the kid sitting next to her has started to glance at her from time to time-not her, surely, probably just out the window, thinking the same thing she is thinking.

The two play a game together like kindergarteners would. One would look over, then they would be caught and both would look away. The other would steal a glance, and then that one would quickly turn their heads. Just as Spenser was getting tired of the game, and all the people on the bus who now seem to be looking at them, then the two look at the same time and bump heads with each other.

"Ouch!"

"Oh, I'm sorry-"

"-No it was my fault-"

"-Should have been paying attention."

"Are you ok, Trever?" The girl with the emerald eyes leans over and looks between the two of them-gosh her eyes, glittering in the morning light filtering through the trees. The little boy behind her is staring wide eyed at Spenser, his lower lip trembling.

Great, Spenser already is making him cry.

"Yeah, just an accident," the boy-Trever- says, his hand to the back of his neck. His eyes dart back and forth throughout the bus, and Spenser sees some guy staring at them. When she looks closely, his head is turned around completely on his body like an owl, and a second later it rolls back into place.

Spenser is officially creeped out. She's had weird experiences before, like what happened at school-no she wouldn't get into that. And she's always sort of had a sixth sense for chasing the oddities. But it's not like she's ever encountered something that strange on a bus, let alone in the middle of forsaken nowhere with a kid she just bumped foreheads with.

"I'm sorry, I didn't introduce myself," the kid says, his voice at that halfway point between puberty and childhood, making him sound squeaky. "I'm Trever, and this is Alex and Heather."

Heather, the girl, shoots Trever a look Spenser doesn't miss and then her eyes flout back in front of her. The more Spenser looks the more beautiful the girl seems to become, like a princess sitting on her throne even though they sit in the middle of a bus that smells like aftershave.

To be fair, she and that boy are the best looking things on the bus.

"I'm Spenser," she says, feeling slightly awkward. The little boy-Alex- is still staring at her with his beautiful watery eyes, and she wants to reach over and pat his head or something, tell him that's it's alright. She doesn't though, because Trever is shaking her hand in his awkwardly. "Nice to meet you."

There is a few minutes of silence.

"So where are you headed?" Trever asks her. Alex has leaned his head against the seat and closes his eyes tightly.

"Jefferson," Spenser responds, "And you guys?"

"Long Island," Trever says, "Meeting with family."

"Same here."

It wasn't a lie. Spenser's uncle has his car shop in Jefferson, West Virginia, right on the border with Maryland. She'll spend her summer with him, just like she has spent every summer with him since her parents died. And after how this year went, Spenser isn't sure she's going back to school ever again, with her failing grades she isn't likely to get a scholarship to go to the private school she had been attending. She'll probably just slip out the backdoor one night and take the road she has shown all the other runaways, the road to New York City.

"So are you guys related?" Spenser asks. The three are way too suspicious to be siblings.

"Distant cousins," Trever says, rather smoothly, and that makes Spenser feel as though he wasn't lying. She has already pegged him as a bad liar.

"Are your parents meeting you in Jefferson?" Heather asks me. Alex has climbed into her lap, holding his head in his hands.

"No," Spenser doesn't want to tell them that her parents are dead, and have been dead for a while. Most of her life. If she sees a picture of them, she wouldn't recognize it. But if she heard their voices, smelled their scent, she would know them. She would know them by what she has, warm feelings hidden deep in her mind, laughter, the –twinge- sound as strings snap together, twinkling lights all lined up in a row. She motions to Alex, "Is he ok?"

Heather glances down at the beautiful boy in her arms, "Oh, yeah, he just gets bad headaches."

Spenser decides to leave it alone.

"Is there someone who's going to meet you in Jefferson?" Trever asks. His hands are nervously twisting something in his hands that looks like a napkin. His nose is lifted as if he's smelling something. And in his eyes there shines a fear. Perhaps for Spenser, perhaps for themselves. Maybe for someone or something that Spenser will never understand.

Spenser finds the question weird, but decides it's polite to answer anyway, "No, my uncle works normally."

"Hey man," cottonmouth leans over the seat and starts to pull the cap off Trever's head, which Trever grips with all his might and looks very offended, eyes bulging. Cottonmouth doesn't seem to notice, "Man, I've got this same hat back home. You look totally rad."

"Thank you, now please let it go." Trever says, not very forcefully. His voice shakes.

Spenser gets very nervous. Her ADHD has decided she has sat long enough.

The bus shakes to a stop right in front of a bus station on the highway, exit two. Spenser stands, trying to push through the two boys now struggling over lordship of the red cap. "This is my stop," she says, and before they could really move, Heather reaches over to swat at cottonmouths hand, "Stop messing with him!" and Alex goes tumbling out of her arms and sprints off the bus in a huff.

"Alex!" Heather grabs her bag and his, which have been discarded next to them, and takes off after the fleeing boy, with Trever giving off a terrible little squeal, "Bla-ha-ha, wait for me!" and then he wraps his fingers around his hat and runs, dragging cottonmouth with him until cottonmouth hits the side of the slowly closing bus doors with a –ting-.

Half the hippies on the bus stand, rushing out towards the fleeing kids-jumping over seats and railings and tearing out stuffing form the damp plastic so that it seems to rain grey stuffing-grabbing at the almost closed doors and yanking them back open. One stops, turns to look at Spenser, a forked tongue flicking between teeth and eyes darting towards the exit, murmurs to himself "Not ripe yet," and then rushes after his companions.

The bus driver glances back towards Spenser, "Oh, yes… yes." Then closes the door, and keeps driving.

"Whoa, man, where'd all the people go?" Cottonmouth asks, finally looking up from where he's at sprawled in the isle.

Spenser is really to much in shock to do much but sit down, and she does so without thinking.


	2. Chapter 2

**All Rights Reserved**

The rest of Spenser's trip is uneventful, besides the addition of cottonmouth.

Cottonmouth's real name is Donovan, and he has been following Spenser since she got off the bus station two stops after she should have gotten off. For the last three miles he has been walking behind her, humming a Jimi Hendrix song under his breath, and being a general nuisance. And her irritation has reached its peak level.

"What the heck do you want, you crazy stoner?" Spenser asks, finally spinning around and confronting the guy.

As far as Spenser could tell, Donovan is nineteen years old, or maybe twenty, with a sort of heart shaped face and long, gangly limbs. He has dark blonde dreadlocks that meet in a widows peak and fall down his back, unkempt and smelling suspiciously like lavender, and his eyes are a strange mix between brown and hazel, and seem to keep changing the longer Spenser looks at him. He has a canvas traveling bag thrown over his shoulder and a colorful glass pipe held in his hands, and he keeps this goofy smile on his face that is starting to get creepy.

"Dude, I'm just trying to find my way, you know what I mean? To just find something, in life, that means something," he tells her, and catches up to her slowly while Spenser tries to find something else to say. He stops right before he passes, and stands about a step back from her. "So where we goin'?"

"We aren't going anywhere. I'm going to my uncles, and you're going back where you came from," Spenser tells him, no longer trying to even remotely sound amused. She takes her own bag and hikes it higher on her shoulder, as if that's her resolve, and marches back down the path.

"Whoa, man," he reaches forward with a long limb and catches her shoulder, pulling her back with a roll of his eyes that almost makes it seem like someone else is supposed to be with them, "We're in this together now."

"What are you talking about?" Spenser says, removing his hand from her shoulder. She gets an irritating impression that this whole 'ditch Donovan' thing wasn't really going to work. "We don't even know each other!"

"But that's what family is for," he says, and as if awakened, his eyes become clear. Spenser looks close to see if there are windshield wipers, but he simply stares back rather intently, before looking back towards the trees.

Okay. Spenser really has no idea anymore.

"We aren't family, we meet on the bus."

"But we are family. Oh, wait! You don't know, do you? Man, what a bummer. You don't recognize me?"

They stare at each other.

"Nope," Spenser says, "I'm pretty sure I don't know you."

"Nah man, you just don't know that you know me," he says, and then his glassy eyes once again widen as if he said something wonderful, "whoa man, that's deep!"

Spenser rubs her eyes with her hands, finding herself significantly angered in a sort of humorous way. She's not going to get rid of him as easily as she hopped. Maybe if they keep walking his tiny brain will get attached to something else, and then he'll be forced to leave. Spenser found this her best option if she wanted to keep her sanity, "Look, fine, just stay two feet away from me. And you can't stay with my uncle. You keep walking after that. And don't call me man, my name is Spenser."

"Spenser Braddock, yeah man I know-Oh, I mean lady. Yeah lady, I know. You have a name tag on your bag there. Did you go to private school?"

Spenser tries really hard not to snap, "Catholic school."

"Sweet, lady. Religion is sweet," Donovan says.

Spenser starts walking again, and that calms her. She always feels better when she is moving, she thought for a long time it was because of her ADHD, but really just the feeling of air on her face feels better than soup and water when she washes. She can hear and smell water not to far away, the creek that runs between state lines. Not three miles away from that creek is Uncle Dave's repair shop.

Spenser lets her mind wonder to the three kids that fled the bus that morning. She isn't sure why, but she felt that they were running from something bigger than just parents and home troubles. Something that could kill you. Spenser had thought, back when she first got off the bus, of finding them. She really didn't have anything to lose. All she owned were the clothes on her back and the bag hanging from her shoulder, she had lived off that bag for as long as her parents had been dead, and she is convinced by now that the bag will continue to hold her life within, like an allegory.

Or something like that. Spencer isn't quite good at school.

It's not like there is really anything she wants to do, or accomplish, or see. Her view on life has always been sort of lack luster, she follows what interests her, and hunts what presents herself to be hunted-part of the whole 'chasing the oddities' thing, and Lord knows she's encountered oddities. Her ambition in elementary school had been to sleep, and on good days she measured her success by how many classes she skipped, so much that her parents used to get called into parent-teacher conferences to discuss her lack of drive. Along with ADHD and dyslexia, she gave them a pretty had time.

Uncle Dave just doesn't really care. Not like they did. Would he notice if she didn't come back?

That's when she hears the shuffling of a bag, and the crunch of gravel. Spenser turns to see Donovan crouched on the ground, pulling out a large mason jar with a plaid patterned fabric draped over the top and held in place by a rubber band. "What are you doing?"

"Getting a refill, lady," Donovan answers.

"Are you kidding? We're in the middle of walking here, and you're going to smoke now?"

Donovan pops over the jar and the liquid pours over the top as if overfull. He takes his pipe, and acting like each drop is precious, scoops some into the funnel. The liquid itself isn't thick like honey but is watery like apple juice, and it smell like soup. It's unlike anything Spenser has seen in her short life.

"What is that?"

"Nectar, lady," Donovan says proudly, "the drink of the gods!"

"Okay," Spenser says, and turns to keep on waking. She is way to tired to deal with him.

…

Donovan sang the notes of some Bob Marley song all the way to the shop, and then stopped dead, smiled, and turned to Spenser, smoking nectar from his pipe in long exhales of gold. His eyes were glassed over, and Spenser swears she can see the brain cells dying within his almost empty head. "Man this pace reeks! No wonder none of the freaky dudes notice you!"

Spenser isn't entirely sure what to say, but she decides that she should just pretend to take him seriously, "Thanks."

So the car repair shop doesn't smell great, big deal. There isn't a place like this in the world that smells like perfume and happy things. All the people who ever come here are hot and sweaty and irritated that their cars blew up on the highway, and the whole place smells like grease and five week old chili-which might actually be because someone left a Styrofoam bowl under one of the tables. Then there's the five guys who Uncle Dave has working for him, who live so deep in the woods they have trucks with age old Confederate flags and are missing several teeth. Those boys smell like chewing Tabaco and cigarettes, with whiskey and rum always sitting next to their favorite wrenches.

The place itself is small. The work space is a two story garage that can only fit three cars up on jacks, a tin building held together by six screws and luck. Between each of the car jacks are small, unsteady worktables that are kept standing by bricks or travel brochures, parts and toolboxes are thrown across the place, quite a few rats can always be seen living under a cardboard box or festering around a left over lunch pail. The place had a heavy, thick atmosphere, and one of the workers was spread out on the oily floor, sleeping under a half fixed Toyota.

At the far left end of the shop is a door that never closes, which leads into a hallway. The only bathroom in the place is the first door to the right, and the second door to the right is the office and the living room and the visitor's desk-all in one. Three nasty couches make a circle around an ancient TV, whose only two stations are in Spanish and static. Other random bits of junk cover the walls and the shelves, a metal shelf next to a wooden shelf next to an old china cabinet. Stairs to the bedrooms are in the corner, and under is sheltered the kitchen, which doubles as the office desk, with a sink and stove, and papers filed messy against all four walls, two rusted desk chairs, and enough cat food bowls to keep fed a small army.

"Sweet place though," Donovan says. Spenser isn't sure if he's lying or not, but this place is home. Which is an overstatement, because Spencer doesn't really like the place. But there's something about having a place to go back to that makes her defensive about it.

"Uncle Dave?" There are no other cars being worked on, besides the Toyota, and the man under it doesn't seem to be surfacing from dream land anytime soon. Behind the shop there comes a blare of really outdated country music, and some voices, but Uncle Dave doesn't sound like he's part of them. "Are you home?"

Spenser walks towards the stairs to the bedrooms, finding nothing but shadows and humid steam up there. She mounts the stairs, and then realizes that Donovan is following.

"Hey, whoa, you're not allowed to come up here, understand? No boys allowed," she tells him, pushing his chest under his is firmly planted on the cement of the ground floor.

Donovan looks a bit crestfallen, "Uncle Dave lives up there."

"Uncle Dave is a man, not a boy. Wait here. Or make yourself useful somewhere else," Spenser leaves out the last part, but the silent 'where I am not' still sands. And Donovan doesn't try to follow her, he just lumbers around the room on too long limbs, humming to himself.

Uncle Dave isn't in any of the bedrooms, all small wood and cement boxes. When Spenser comes back down to the main floor, not even Donovan is around.

There's something stupid about losing all the people around you that makes a girl wish she was strong enough to defeat it. Even if it was Donovan, and he drove her crazy with his addicted self, there was something about his presence that made her feel safe, almost the way she felt around Uncle Dave, or the way she felt around her parents.

She decides she hates this world as she goes looking for everyone.

"Uncle Dave! Where are you people?"

"Hey… kid?" the voice was high pitched for a man, and all the five foot two glory of uncle Dave appears in the doorway, a plastic bag slung over his shoulder. He is a tiny, overweight little man, with a sever tan not gotten in the good way and hands nasty from how much car gunk always ends up on them. "Oh, hey kid. When'd you get back?"

"Just now, actually," Spencer tells him.

He crosses his arms over his chest, "Two weeks early. Your report card is on the table."

Spenser found that she didn't really miss him that much. She thought that she would, and feels a little disappointed that she didn't. Maybe she was expecting to come here and get a warm coming back, but she shouldn't have fooled herself. Was it ever?

"Well?" Uncle Dave asks, breaking her from her trance.

"Well, what?"

"You got anything to say about what I saw in your report card?" he waited a minute. "Ok. Ok, nothing, you don't even feel sorry for it. Six failed classes. Notes from the teachers, and what was it that you get expelled for, two weeks before finals? What was it, Spenser?"

Spenser feels herself flushing, her whole body going red. There is a sting at her eyes she didn't know she was capable of, and she thinks about school. She hates school. It's always school that messes her up, always weird things that happen. Spenser has been good so far at ignoring them, but sometimes they suck her in. The mystery, the chase. She couldn't hold back when that weird snake-well, Spencer doesn't want to talk about it really. To be honest, she tried to ignore it.

But sometimes weird things can't be ignored.

"A toilet. You blew up a toilet-oh, no, not just a toilet, but a toilet in the boys bathroom. And oh, you should read the official letter, headmaster Griggs didn't leave a detail out." He waits another moment. Spenser feels hot and heavy all over, her hands shaking, "Do you want this, Spenser? You really think my sister wanted this from you?"

Spenser thinks about the toilet, and more importantly about the half woman, half serpent that cornered her in a bathroom stall. Of course, Spenser just had to find out what was hiding behind door number three. Sometimes she really dislikes herself.

Most the time, Spenser really dislikes herself.

"Look," Uncle Dave got really close to her face, his hand resting painfully on her shoulder, "I want you to succeed. I do. I do because for some stupid reason my sister decided to be a mother. But if you want to repay my sister with being a failure and ruining your future, be my guest. Just know I'm not letting you succor off me while you piss around."

Spenser shoves his hand off her shoulder, where she can start to feel the bruises blooming. Her eyes stung and her whole body felt as though it might react before she has time to cool herself down, she might just slam her fist into the wall-or his face. He never even bothered contacting Spenser's mom, so how could he speak like that? He never did anything with his life, so what does he know? He only wants Spenser to fail, he doesn't care about her.

Uncle Dave has a grown up daughter he hasn't seen in six years, whose going to collage at NYU, and he's proud of it, even though he had nothing to do with her being there beyond child support money. Uncle Dave took Spenser in because the police where there when she was brought to him. A charity project. A dud. Spenser never wanted to be here.

But guilt pools in the back of her mind. In the back of her mind, the parents she can't remember the faces of are turning away, their backs made of steel. There were so many emotions involved that Spenser took a moment to categorize them, and make sure that she knew what they were.

"Hey, Uncle Dave, nice to meet you man," Donovan says form behind Uncle Dave, and before Uncle Dave really has a moment to register the hippy boy standing in his doorway, he is pulled into a one sided hug that even Spenser is even surprised at.

The hug ended, and Uncle Dave seemed to bewildered to speak, blinking at Donovan a few times as if he isn't entirely sure he's real.

"Uncle Dave, this is Donovan," Spenser says, before Uncle Dave could find his wits, "my friend."

She isn't sure if that's the right way of putting it, but two wrongs can make a right sometimes.

Uncle Dave gives Donovan the once over, and then sends Spenser a disappointed look that goes right to her toes, it tingles so much. "This your boyfriend?"

"No!"

"Whoa man," Donovan swivels to look at Spenser, "I didn't know you had a boyfriend!"

Uncle Dave gives Spenser a clear look. 'Good catch,' it sarcastically says.

Spenser feels her whole body go hot for a different reason.

Uncle Dave doesn't bother saying anything more to Donovan besides, "Don't touch anything," and he makes his way into the shop, kicking the foot of the sleeping worker. The man sits up to fast and slams his head against the guts of the Toyota with a –bang-. Donovan laughs, and then moves into the living room, falling face first into the disgusting mess of the couch.

Spenser doesn't tell him how many time's she's found bodily fluids in that couch. She simply goes up to her room, lays out on the floor, and sleeps.


	3. Chapter 3

**All Rights Reserved**

 **I don't think I realized what an endeavor I was taking on when I first started to write this, it was really just to help me get over my writers block for my other fanfiction, but I committed, and there really isn't anywhere to move but forward. Therefore, the next five or so chapters are just setting up the scene and there wouldn't be an introduction to the real plot until later.**

 **But on the bright side, at least I can promise you an adventure.**

 **Happy Reading.**

Donovan and Spenser burn her report card behind the shop the next morning. They sit together on a cinderblock with weeds growing in the center of it and watch it crumple to ashes on the dirt. Donovan is smoking nectar from that pipe again, and every time Spenser looks at it, the thing seems to ripple, as if the strange wave patterns of the brightly colored glass were actually metal.

"You're not like most of my cousins," Donovan tells me, "Lady, you're holding yourself back. And you know it!"

Spenser choices not to answer back. Whenever Uncle Dave had insisted on knowing who the heck Donovan even was, he would state his relation to Spenser. Third cousins once removed on his father's side. And Spenser gives credit where credit is due, he's stuck to that model. He even speaks to her as if they have this whole family that she isn't aware of having, with whole histories and lives. But he never mentions names, and looks expectantly at Spenser as if waiting for her to figure it out herself. She's heard about affairs and sibling rivalries and crazy girlfriends more in the last day than she has in her life.

"Kills me, Lady. Just kills me," he sighs, and takes another hit.

The stuff he is smoking smells sweet and wonderful today-Spencer must be getting used to it. The little finch has perched upon a tree limb, and over the dying flames of her report card, she watches it. "What kills you?"

"I mean, you know it's happening all around you, lady. You can see it, I know you can. You catch something out the corner of your eye," he made an impression with his hands, reaching out to something, his face consumed with surprise, "And then you just decided to overlook it." The expression and the face falls, "It's like you're just… I don't know lady, I know you got the good inside of you, if you catch my drift. I can feel your power. But you just ignore it. You ignore everything."

Spenser feels something tugging at a bit of emotion she doesn't want it to. She's spent a long time trying to deny that there is anything wrong with her life, she had tried to follow something she must have promised when she was younger. She must have made it a promise, or someone told her to follow it, someone she doesn't remember in a time she cannot place. Ignore them, just look right over them. The weird ones. The weird things. It's one big game of 'I don't see you, you don't see me.' And it's worked. But that doesn't give her power. That makes her weak, not strong.

"I mean, you even ignored that fight on the bus!"

"What fight?"

Now that he has her attention, Donovan smiles. He twirls his finger around in a circle in front of her eyes, "you think I'm the one who's high, lady. But you're the one who loses reality, when you chose to fall into the glamor's trap."

"What are you talking about?" Spenser tries to remember what happened on the bus. She remembers the red cap, Donovan and Trever fighting over it, she remembers the fleeing of the hippies, and Donovan's goofy smile as he sits himself down next to Spenser very quietly for the next two bus stops, waiting for her to make the first move. "You tried to take that kids hat."

"That's what you think happened, lady."

"No," Spenser thinks hard again. She sees what happened, and it's blurry. The heat, it makes everything blurry. "No, that's what happened."

"Lady, I saved goat-boy from getting hit over the head," Donovan says, and even though his eyes are glassy, he still looks completely serious. Completely lucid, in an out-of-it kind of way. Like he's remembering, not like he's high. "Those man-eaters would have used his bones for toothpicks. Would have used your bones as tooth picks too, that last one, if I hadn't been there. Good thing Uncle Dave smells so rank. It's protected you for a long time."

Goat-boy, does he mean Trever? Spenser doesn't tell him how offensive that could be taken. She doesn't tell him that man-eaters only live in remote parts of the world, and that no one today is a cannibal, and if they were, how would Donovan know? And Spenser is sick and tired of hearing about this all from Donovan. She is sick and tired of feeling like she has escaped death on sheer ignorance of death alone. She doesn't know how Uncle Dave smelling the way he does influences anything, she isn't sure what that has to do with her almost dying, and she sure as heck doesn't know what those kids have to do with her.

"There's a big tribe of them around here," Donovan says, as if discussing the weather, "man-eaters are crazy populated in these parts, but you should see Mississippi! Tons of them, just walking around like hippy zombies."

"I thought you were with those guys.'

Donovan looks at me very seriously, actually turning his head for once, "I don't make music with cannibals."

Oh no, that would just be wrong, wouldn't it?

Spenser's head hurts, she's taking in to much information at one time. She lays her forehead to her knees and tires to block out the strange feeling of eyes on her neck, but whenever she looks up the only thing she sees is that little finch still perched on the branch of the closest tree, so motionless it could be a statue.

"Anyway, lady, most of my cousins have realized it by now."

"Realized what?"

"Who they are," Donovan says.

"Donovan, look. I know who I am. I don't need to be awakened or enlightened or anything about things I haven't been able to see," Spenser tells him, but she knows the words are never final with Donovan.

"Who are you then?"

"I'm…I'm just Spencer."

"You're dyslexic, aren't you?" Donovan laughs and starts to punch holes in the air in front of him with his pipe, "Words just flout right off the paper and do back flips and summersaults. I bet you can't sit still either, I bet your always feeling restless."

Spenser stares at him, then decides not to answer.

Donovan nudges her with his elbow, "You're not made for any of that. You're different. Your special, lady. Like me. Like most of our cousins."

"Your nuts," Spenser tells him, and instead focuses on the dying fire that was her report card. But her eyes had a hard time focusing. She was losing track of her thoughts and they were taking her to place she didn't want them to go. Of course, Donovan is crazy. He's smoked so much nectar that his brain is permanently fried. So Spenser didn't really believe anything he said, it only made her nervous.

It also made her think about those kids. It made her wonder about what actually happened on that bus that she never saw. Had Donovan pulled Trever's head out of the way of something trying to hit him? Had that little boy really been in pain? Had that last hippy really wanted to kill her? Spenser was questioning her own sanity. She knows she can't take Donovan's words for truth. But the more these two days pass, the more she questions herself. And the more she questions herself, the less and less she seems to know.

Spenser can't sit still any longer. She stands and kicks the warm ashes from their resting place.

The little finch sits and stares, but does not fly.

…

Spenser sits with Donovan at the counter when lunch rolls around, surrounded by three beers, a poker game, and four greasy men. Spenser also figures that at least twenty teeth are missing in the group, and one man keeps spitting back into his beer bottle with a loud –ding-. Donovan had joined in with the game, the men were only a few years older than him, even if a bit wiser, and they all got along swimmingly. Stupidity loves company.

"Ah, man!" Donovan says, throwing his head back and running his fingers in his stringy hair, "You guys are good!"

Spenser could beg to differ. Donovan had twenty-four dollars, a McDonald's coupon for one free milkshake, and one guy's really crappy plastic watch, while all the other guys have quarters and empty pockets. But his sportsmanship is to be commended, he really looks like he believes that these guys are really good at poker. And maybe he makes the guys feels as though they are good at poker, because the room is full of laughter and boisterous clinking of beer cans, which give off metallic –snaps- whenever they are even touched.

The news is on from the radio behind, a thick blast of static noise. It's one of those older one that were given out in case of the apocalypse years and years ago, when West Virginia residence took to the ground in a statewide panic against the shutting down of the coal industry. Spenser's whole family before her had been coal miners, or, at least, that she knew of. Uncle Dave never gave any clues about the rest of them besides that they came from New York.

The radio broadcaster is saying, "-a young boy was found dead this morning flouting in Cherry Run Creek, with two legs missing and bites all along the body, from what coroners are saying, may be human teeth."

Donovan looks at Spenser with a sudden clarity, as it always seems to be with him. He looks at her as if he expects her to pick up instantly some kind of unsaid clues and connect them. Or maybe just to make a point. He is telling her with his eyes, 'listen to the radio Spenser. Believe.' But Spenser isn't entirely sure what she is believing anymore. As far as what Spenser can see, there is a point of no return. You either believe or you don't, you can't be fully here and you can't be fully there. She wants to rest comfortably in the middle of this…whatever this is. But she knows that she can't. Whatever Donovan wants her to believe, well, if you hear something enough times you start to believe it. Even if you don't realize it.

Spenser admits to herself that for the past two days, Donovan _has_ felt like family. A Brother. Someone she can count on. Like a part of something she has been missing for as long as she has breathed. He is the cusps of something she doesn't yet understand, and she doesn't want to. But she can say it to herself. Donovan just might be her cousin, if only in spirit.

"-the young boy was reportedly seen at five different bus stations within Virginia and Maryland over the past week, having been kidnapped by an older teenager from his home in Kansas. Nothing further is known about him, as his body was stolen from the coroners' office not two hours after the final verdict."

"Lots of sick people in the world," Uncle Dave says,

"Yeah man," Donovan says, "true that."

There is a rustling and then a –snap- behind Spenser, and when she whirls around, nothing rests within the tree. Only the sure impression that something was there, and that something was watching them.

…

Spenser gets restless when she has nothing to do. Normally she can ignore it, she can play basketball, or she can mold pottery, or she can cause enough noise to distract her always changing thoughts. Anything she can do with her hands, she is pretty good at. But this constant sitting, this constant presence, as if something is waiting to come from the woodworks, gnaws at her nerves. She paces around the shop, she tinkers with screws and bolts, she throws a bouncy ball through the tree limbs, she sleeps in the middle of the street where the sun hits and makes the ground simmer.

And all the while that little finch is perched like a guardian in the surrounding forest and Donovan puffs golden smoke out of his nectar filled pipe.

Spenser hadn't noticed quite a few things about the world around her, but Spenser is looking now. She is listening to Donovan, only a little bit, and really looking at the world around her. And everything she sees she is not surprised to see. It's almost like she has noticed all these things before, but never really given them thought. Now she sees them for what they really are.

Donovan smokes gold. Every few hours or so, something strange and large, larger than a bus, would move very close to their shop. One of the guys who stopped for a faulty tire had only one eye, at the very center of his forehead, and no other eyes in sight.

Her head hurts more and more, these days. Her hands and feet itch for action, for anything. Her ADHD is kicking and screaming like a small child, and focusing on one thing for very long is difficult. Even the forest feels on edge, and sick with heat exhaustion. The leaves are drooping and soggy with sweat, the air ripples with illusion, water from late night showers rise from the asphalt. The whole world is protesting the heat.

Normally, as with the past two days, Donovan would be sitting near her, smoking out of his pipe. But the heat is steadily rising, and Spenser laying drowsy on the yellow line in the middle of the road, baking in the sun. The little finch has perched itself right next to her, but it's really to hot to reach over and touch it. Spenser doesn't want to scare away its comforting presence, anyway.

But the second newfound comforting presence is not here. Donovan has got into the shop, or behind, or wherever it is that he goes. Spenser gets the willpower to sit up. She's been seeing strange things these days, but nothing stranger than Donovan not here, or the missing sweet smell of the nectar as he exhales. She has become use to it, and without it she feels unbalanced. Almost as unbalanced as thinking about that beautiful little boy-Alex- dead in a river alone-

-Spenser refuses to think about them. There's nothing she can do now.

She pulls herself up by the bumper of the rusted Chevy that some old guy had driven in a few hours ago, the only thing offering a bit of shade. There is the sound of bad country music and banjos from inside the shop, Uncle Dave laughing at something. Donovan isn't inside, and Spenser peeked around to the hallway, but he has been forbidden to go inside their home unless it's nighttime and he needed to use the couch.

Something told Spenser to trust her instincts. Something, a part of her, one that was braver and not as scared of the unknown. Well, not scared, that wasn't the right word. Unwilling, that was a good word. Uncomfortable, that was another. There are a lot of really good words to use when explaining the way that Spenser was embracing, well, 'Donovan ideology'. The way she was letting go, bit by bit, or what felt like her mortality.

Spenser closes her eyes and does what she always wished she could do. She listens. The forest breaths like a ragged dragon, and the very air shifts with life. She takes deep inhales, exhales, and catches the sweet scent of nectar.

She follows the scent around the shop, keeping one hand on the concrete of the wall. The cinder block that Donovan and Spenser had been sitting on yesterday hasn't moved, and there is nothing but thick gravel and weeds down a flat plane that leads to the forest. There is a shimmering light within its depths that, at first glance, looks like the reflection of sunlight in the patchy forest.

Spenser choses to follow where that light is within the trees. The closer she gets to the brilliant reflection, the closer she gets to what seems to be a spray of water cascading through the air like a sprinkler system. Donovan stood before it, his pipe between his teeth, and beyond is some shimmering shadow of a person who is half blocked from vision by a tree. Spenser doesn't dare move when she hears her name being said.

It's that moment everyone has at least once in their lives, when you overhear a conversation where the main topic is you. It's awkward, and sparks that horrible curiosity that is always bubbling under the surface of humanity.

"-a strong one alright, not Big Three, but something I haven't met before. And man, I'm worried. She's got good protection here, pop, but she needs to upgrade. Stay here any longer, and she'll die."

Spenser's blood runs cold.

"You almost sound like you care," the noise is a crackling noise, like a phone with bad reception. There is a shift in the misty figure, so he is even more hidden, but the voice is defiantly male and strong-powerful- in a way that Spenser doesn't understand just yet. "Taken to the mortal girl?"

Donovan throws his head back and laughs, "man, she hasn't even hit puberty! Nah, I'm worried. Things are..." there is a moment when Donovan shifts in the light, like a reflection in a mirror that has been broken. His face ages. He seems to slouch. He looks stronger and more wise, an old man puffing his pipe. "…things are changing. Feel it in the air."

"Aye, boy. So can I," the crackling voice says back. Spenser attributes this to talking to ghosts. To deadly ghosts that think Spenser is going to die. "They will need all the help they can get. Even now. Your uncles are speaking in riddles these days. I believe someone is whispering in their ear."

"The winds are a powerful thing to lose," Donovan mused. Spenser realizes she has seen him like this before. Donovan has lapsed into these moments of wisdom and clarity before, but they were small and Spenser has always attributed them to the overuse of his pipe. What had Donovan called the nectar? The drink of the gods.

Spenser had a horrible feeling writhing in her gut.

"It's a good idea," the man crackled, as if laughing. The sudden change scared her. People don't just change moods like the wind changes direction. "I'll alert Chrion. What of the other Halflings?"

"I believe we can think up something. Every little one helps, if what feels like it' coming is coming."

And then Donovan takes a huge hit on his pipe, the image falters and dies. Spenser has no time to really stay and watch it, she turns with the sound of beeping, like a dial tone or lost connection on a phone, and sprints back to the shop, putting both hands on the metal as she follows it to the door and into the living room that she has called her own for the past six years of her life. One more swoop, and she is in her bedroom.

Spenser closes her eyes tight, and wills it to be a dream.

…

Spenser dreams of a cave. Light reflected off all the walls from crystals and resembled stationary strobe lights, even the grey areas look miraculous, frozen in time. There sits in the middle a goat-man. Spenser doesn't have any experience with goats, but she does live in the country and so she has interacted with them from afar on occasion. But she doesn't really have any experience with goats who have the upper bodies of men, but she can tell you that it sort of resembled something that you would see when watching 'Avatar: the Last Airbender'. The man had, from the navel down, curls of a goat with hooves and a bobbing tail, and from the navel up is an especially hairy, very attractive, mountain man with horns like a rams that glittered gold.

He opens his mouth, and words form in the likeness of an old language, that Spenser somehow understands, "Hello, young half-blood."

"Half-blood?" she remembers what Donovan's misty friend had said in the forest, Halflings. It wasn't said distastefully, but it was said in an odd way, like it has a background to it. A history. A half-blood. "What is that?"

"It is what you are," the goat-man says. "As I am what I am. Remember well, child, we cannot change what we are fated to be. And you have a fate of magnificent proportions."

"Who are you?" Spenser demands, "and how do you know my fate?"

"I am Pan," he said his name and the walls seem to respond. The timeless feeling of the cavern fades for a moment, and the whole thing shutters. Spenser gets the impression that many years have just gone by. "And I know your fate because I know the fate of all wild things, for wild things reside within me. And you are wild."

Spenser didn't feel like the comment was made to be offensive. It was a statement. And Spenser somehow knew it was a fact.

Pan looks out over her head, but when Spenser tries to look, she finds she cannot turn. Her body is stuck in this spot, and her eyes roam over the goat-man named Pan, as if stunned to wonder. "The Wild is dying, my dear. Like you, wild things are becoming tame. Truly Wild places are diseased by humanity and progress. War and time has revenged this land, and the land is dying."

A sorrow greater than any sorrow Spenser has ever felt overcomes her body. She feels herself going unsteady, the weight of it to much to carry on her own. Pan smiled a sad smile. He understood, Spenser could sense it. Was this the way Pan felt? Crushed by the dying Wild?

"This is why I have come to you, little hero," Pan says, though Spenser knows she has never done anything in this world that's considered heroic. She is just her, Spenser. Just a kid. "Before you embark on your journey, the wonderful and terrible journey that it will be, I wish a favor from you."

Spenser felt inclined to listen to him, inclined to help him, in a way that she never has before. It doesn't feel like she's possessed, but she might as well be. She never had a moment with no control over her body and mind, not like this, and the separation is somewhat painful. But she listens, and watches. And the more she watches, the more things she notices. She notices the flicker of a bed under Pan, animals she has never seen before, vines and moss and greenery like an underground oasis.

"Protect him," Pan says, "as he will protect you."

The dream changed.

Spenser stands in a forest, a forest that is dark but light in its darkness, with trees that live and breathe, with dangers unseen and unheard. A creek bubbles happily next to her feet, and there is birdsong and laughter around her and far in the distance. Happy voices follow the –clash- of metal on metal. Around her the oaks sway happily in the wind to create the constant chatter of leaves.

A boy, about fifteen or sixteen, stands near the creek. He is speaking into the mist of the creek, looking down into the water as if looking at his own reflection. From the angle Spenser can see him from, he has a scar running the length of his face that is not fully healed, it is red and appears to be agitated. The boys' shoulders are strong, his whole body is reclined like a waiting warrior in jeans and a bright orange t-shirt.

A voice tumbled up from the reflection, one that curled inside Spenser's blood and causes her whole body to tremble, "You are running out of time."

"I'm still planning," the boy says, "the winter solstice-"

"-enough. Just get back to me what is due."

Then the dream capsized, and Spenser was falling, falling-

-Spenser awoke with in a tangle of wet sheets and half screamed into the night. Her bed is soaked with her sweat, and in the nighttime her whole body feels cold. She scrambles where she is, hitting her hand on her bedside table, making it jump a foot into the air. But instead of it crashing down from the impact, it only swayed. It's anchored by a pure white cat with startling eyes.

Spenser feels as though she should recognize the eyes form somewhere. She knows that she has seen them, but she isn't sure where from. The light reflected from the morning sun seems to be enhancing the honey color of them, they are like amber pikes. They are hard and old and intelligent, and Spenser feels calm simply by looking in them.

"Spenser!"

Uncle Dave is calling to her, but she is unwilling to look away from the mystical eyes of the cat. She knows she should answer, but… she is mystified. But she didn't have to worry about it, as the door flew open and in the doorway was Uncle Dave with flaring nostrils in rage.

He asked her in his loud and forceful voice, "Where the hell are you getting these 'friends' from?" His eyes land on the feline on the side table, "and what the hell is that?!"

"What?" She asks, but at the same time comes a horrible laugh from below, and a cruel feeling creeps its way into her body. The laugh sounds just like some of the hippies that were on the bus three days ago. And what's worse, it sounds like the laugh of the one who-according to Donovan- almost killed her. "Oh…"

"Get these people out of my house!"

"They're in the house?'

But Spenser was already standing and making her way out to the hallway, bypassing the other rooms and the big fan in the hallway that makes her feel cold with sweat, taking the railing in her hands and looking over. Sure enough, at least five of the hippies from the bus are in her living room, and two hippies that she doesn't recognize. All seven of them are lounging on the couches, throwing spare tools and parts at each other, strumming instruments that could have been salvaged from the local dump and singing camp fire songs.

Spenser has no idea what they are doing here, but she remembers what Donovan had called them. Man-eaters, and when Spenser really looks, hard, she can see that they have different eyes-or eye, as in singular- than normal people, red, not from drugs or liquor, but something else entirely. They have paled skin, their teeth are sharp and stained from blood. But their bottom halves, under bellbottoms and jeans were hooves and tails like horses, and Spenser can smell the strange mix of stables and the freezer section of Walmart.

Spenser doesn't want to move. Spenser had noticed these things on the bus, but this is the first time she has admitted to herself that she is seeing them for what they are. She feels as though she has broken some kind of scared oath, a promise many years in the making. But she can't deny that Donovan has opened her eyes, the weirdo that he is, and allowed her to see through the-how did he put it-glamor.

Her ADHD moves on hyper drive, and she finds the courage to go downstairs very suddenly. She takes each step carefully, trying not to fall, not when the one who almost killed her locks eyes and not when she notices that Donovan is nowhere in sight.

No backup. No help. She's in trouble.

"Heyy!" the man-eater closest to her stands and claps her on the shoulder as if they are all real good buddies. Spenser wants to puke from his less-than-pleasant smell. "How's it hanging?"

"We've been waiting for you!"

"There you are! Miss us?"

"Yeah!" Spenser manages a shaky smile. Her dreams last night still echo in her mind, and now her whole living room is full of…well, monsters. She has to get them away from Uncle Dave and the rest of the workers, and for some reason she knows she will need to find Donovan.

"Spenser," Uncle Dave calls from the stairs, "Get these people out of my house!"

"Why don't we go outside and hang out?"

Spenser figures that outside is better than inside and she walks out without allowing them time to think-assuming they do think-hoping to get a head start, hoping to see Donovan. But she doesn't see him, and the others follow with lots of hoots and hollers, one of them explaining in detail the importance of sunlight in a healthy Buddhist lift style. Spenser decided to ignore that one for the time being, considering eating humans weren't in the healthy Buddhist life style.

Spenser wasn't expecting to be followed into the wood. She wasn't expecting the hippie man-eaters to come dangerously close to her back, sniffing large gulps of her scent. She wasn't expecting a fight. Spenser wasn't sure what she was expecting. But what she has now are seven man-eaters very closely surrounding her. And she has this uncomfortable feeling that she is going to know what it's like to get bite.

"What ever happened to world peace?" She asks the one in front of her.

Before she could answer one of the girl hippies got very impatient and grabbed a chunk of Spenser's hair, pulling her head back. Hippie-number-two, the one she had asked about world peace, stretches his fingers forward to strangle her amid the horrible music from half formed instruments and bang of singing cannibals.

She kicks him in the crotch.

As it seems, even hippies that eat humans for breakfast feel it down there. Spenser revels in the moment of stunned silence, one of the man-eaters playing –dun- -dun- -dun- on his half broken ukulele. The man-eater hits the ground and dissolves into powder, resembling a sand castle that is crushed form the inside, crumbling in on himself. What would you even call something like that?

The little finch comes out of nowhere like a tiny snowball, and tears into the female man-eaters face. Spenser has enough common sense to plummet back towards the safety of her house, not daring to look behind her. She needs a weapon, she needs an ally, she needs help.

She can hear them following her, their instruments used as clubs and maces. Spenser has never felt so totally in tune to her own body, she notices the beating of her heart, her mind roaming a mile a minute, her hands working fast and furious as she flung them faster in her retreat, as if imagining a weapon or instrument in her hands.

Spenser barely made it to the farthest shop door before one of the man-eaters caught up to her. She tries to hit him, but she only manages to hit his chest in her fist, and she isn't strong enough to even cause anyone pain but herself. She catches his multicolored beads from his necklace in her hands and tugs him forward, without thinking head-butting him.

It's the stupidest thing she has ever done. She can't see straight. She just feels the explosion of dust around her fingers, hitting her face, and then she is sitting down. When she opens her eyes, ignoring the ringing in her ears, Donovan stands in the middle of the street smoking his pipe, humor dancing in his glazed eyes.

Spenser immediately feels anger pulsing through her body. He is standing there, laughing, while she had to fight for her life? He hasn't been seen for so long that she gets attacked by man-eaters, and he has the gull to stand there and not even help her? This is his fault anyway, if he had never told her about what happened, she would never notice that these hippies are anything but hippies, and maybe then they wouldn't have attacked her!

Spenser opens her mouth to say something, but before she does, Donovan lops over and pulls her, running, into the safety of the shop. Behind them, noises like snarling animals echo across the yard and trees. The white finch has found its way back to Spenser and was leading the way into the living room.

Uncle Dave is passed out on the stairs, a large lump forming on his head. Spenser tells herself its better that way, and she has no problem stepping over him in the rush Donovan is in to get her to her room. He shoves her up the stairs and through the door quickly.

"Pack up, lady," he says, "Just the essentials. We have a long ride ahead."

"Ride?"

But Donovan isn't there anymore. She scrambles to find a backpack, a black Jansport, and throws in some clothes, her toothbrush, a hairbrush, some hair ties-basically the same stuff she unpacked when she got here two days ago. What does he mean, a ride? What could she possibly take with her? She pulls on a rain jacket over her soaked t-shirt and heads down the stairs.

Donovan is ninja fighting with the cannibals. He kicks one and sends him spiraling, throws one over the couch, disarms one with the flick of a wrist. He has a pipe in one hand and moves as though dancing on air, spinning gracefully between the out-classed man-eaters. Spenser almost feels sorry for them, each time he smacks one in the face or chest it crumbles apart in clouds of yellow dust.

He backed one into the corner between the sink and a bookcase. Spenser ran to help him, maybe just to hug the daylights out of the guy for almost letting her die, laughing, and then saving her sorry butt, but instead of doing either Spenser catches the handle of a copper skillet, her arm almost yanking off when it proves to be more stubborn than she is, and scrambles on unsure feet as another man-eater goes for Donovan's shoulder when his back is turned.

-whack- -ting- Spenser hits the man-eater over the head with a skillet.

"Man, you really like hitting people over the head, don't you?" Donovan asks. But Spenser feels all the energy at once leave her body, her adrenaline faltering. Where had she gotten this crazy idea about man-eaters anyway? "Nice shot though. It's not Celestial bronze, but bronze is the next best thing."

Spenser looks down at her shaking hands and the old skillet that's never moved from that wall. It was her mother's grandmother's, or someone related to her family, a sort of old styled one that was a hand deep and had a few legs on each side so it looked like a witches cauldron with a handle. Spenser says silent prayer that they were able to make bronze cooking tools back then that saved her friends life.

"What's Celestial bronze? Why did these people come to eat us?"

"Not us, lady, you," Donovan says, stepping over piles of zombie dust like they were nothing. Spenser got the sudden feeling that they weren't, "and celestial bronze is a metal that kills monster dudes real easy. It's mined on mount Olympus."

Mount Olympus. Sure, why not? Spenser doesn't even blink anymore, "They're not really, you know, dead, right?"

"Nah, monster dudes don't have souls, so their consciences go back to Tartarus, man I don't know, for a few weeks, a month, years, before they reform here on the surface again."

"Not dead, that's good," Spenser mumbles, barely focusing on anything beyond the mustard yellow dust and tie-dye wife beater laying in it. "What's Tartarus?"

"Here," Donovan leans down, taking up the tie-dye t-shirt in his hands and tosses it at Spenser, which she yelps at and dodges. It belongs to a dead man-eater, she is not going to touch it! Donovan only laughs, "It's a trophy, lady. Take it. It's yours."

"A trophy?" That sounds morbid to her. She doesn't want to think about taking something from a…not dead but gone, guy who had nothing to do with her. She killed him. Taking his tank top seems almost counterproductive, "I don't want that!"

"A trophy, lady," Donovan is laughing, his voice sounds like light and cheerful with a strange tinge to it. "It's what is left behind when a monster dude dissolves, and it's left to the lady who defeats it. You take it. It's spoils of war. Shows your honor and skill."

"I hit him with a pan," Spenser deadpans.

"And it was awesome!"

Spenser can't deal with him right now.

Donovan just laughs, "don't worry, these are tame compared to their cousins, the Laestrygonians."

"Those are the ones that live in Mississippi?"

"Yeah, lady, those guys are real animals."

She turns around and looks back at Uncle Dave, who has bleed out on the cement. Oh, he might be dead. Spenser waits a minute to feel something, trying to feel sad that he might be gone for good. But she really doesn't. She gives nothing to him, because she feels like she's never taken anything. And what he's given really isn't worth what he thinks it has.

"Don't worry, he'll wake up," Donovan says, as if it doesn't really matter, "you have your stuff? Radical. Our rides almost here," and then he strides out of the room, taking the tie-dye shirt with him. Spenser scrambles after him, glancing back at her Uncle Dave one last time. She has this terrible feeling that she will never see him again.

She has a horrible feeling that she will never see any of this place again. And then she realizes that this fact doesn't make her sad.

She turns and races after Donovan.

…

Donovan leads Spenser out to the front of the shop, and stands there, looking at the sky. Spenser watches down each side of the road. She isn't sure where the 'ride' is going to come from, but she has this sinking feeling that it'll be nothing like she imagines. Donovan doesn't look down either of the roads. He pulls his shirt over his head, and then pulls on the tie-dye top. Spenser shivers thinking that the man who was wearing that before has, you know, dissolved.

But she doesn't feel bad about Uncle Dave. Strange.

Now wearing baggy jeans and a tie-dye wife beater, Donovan smokes from his pipe golden smoke. The smell is overwhelming, now that Spenser is close enough to notice it, sour like sugary candy and eucalyptus leaves. She's never smelled anything like it before, and watches as the smoke drifts higher into the air, where a vague dot in the distance seems to be coming closer.

Then she hears the rough sound of a moto vehicle, and just when she thinks her day can't get much weirder, there comes a two wheel scooter flouting down from the sky with a man dressed as a biker on it wearing a neon green wind breaker.

The scooter is shiny red, and the seat rather long as though it had been replaced with the seat of a motorcycle. The vehicle and the man together made them look like a messed up Christmas advertisement. But the man is very good looing, much to good looking to be riding a scooter, he is in his thirties with a close cropped brown beard and dirty blonde long hair, with a large and carefree smile, his eyes change colors-brown, green, blue. He pulls himself from his bike and closes his arms around Donovan, seven inches taller than him and Donovan himself is over six foot.

"Hello my boy!"

"Pop, man, how's it hanging!"

The wind seems to have picked up. Spenser feels her hair whip around her face, her eyes watering. She wishes she brought a heavier jacket, because even in the dead heat of summer the wind is freezing cold.

The man looks over at Spenser and she feels herself going stiff. Inside his changing eyes is power that billows up and out like winds, that feeds into his body, making him seem taller than the height that he already has. Spenser wonders how he could ever fit on that scooter, let alone through doors. And when he speaks his voice sounds like weather, storms and wind and rain all crackling in his tone, "So you're the little half-blood. My son has a liking for you, my dear. Come, stand up straight. Let me get a good look at you."

Spenser thought that she was already standing up straight, but she tries to stand up straighter. Shivers run down her spine, and she clutches the strap of her backpack. The man bends down on one knee, and good naturedly, stares into her eyes. His eyes twinkle as if the rain is falling peacefully in there, "Donovan, your right, I don't know either. She could be anyone's. Nice to meet you, honey. My name is Eurus."

"Spenser," Spenser tells him, not sure if she should shake his hand, "what do you mean, I could be anyone's?"

Those twinkling eyes switched over to Donovan, who shrugged, "Didn't get that far."

"I didn't mean your mind, body, or soul, my dear. Those things are all your own, and no one can take them from you. I mean your parentage. I mean the one who was half-way responsible for giving you life. You're a half-blood, Spenser. I think you know this already. Half your blood is mortal blood, and half of your blood is godly."

"God," Spenser says, her brain doing that thing again where it's very hard to think, much less breath, "I thought He was everyone's dad?"

Eurus looks confused, and then realization dawns on him. His eyes change color from blue to a light brown, "Oh, no, honey, not God. That's a completely different matter! I'm talking about gods, gods of the old stories. Greek mythology, if you will. You are one part mortal and one part god."

"So God doesn't exist?"

"I'm not saying he doesn't," his eyes twinkle with rain again, and change colors again. Mysterious storm clouds brew there, "but what he is connected to and what we, as gods, are connected to do not mix. We share different fates, and perhaps live under His realm. But no, we are independent of each other."

"So…"

"You probably do not know me, my dear. I am obscure as most minor gods. My brothers and I are the Anemoi, wind gods." Eurus says, and then puts a hand in Spenser's hair, ruffling it. His hand is oddly warm compared to the freezing wind, and he is familiar because he is like a grown up, non-smoking Donovan.

"My dad here's our ticket out of this place," Donovan tells her. "We're going to take you to somewhere safe, called Camp Half Blood. You'll learn more about yourself there. Come on lady," And with that, he takes Spenser by the arms and hoist her on the back of the scooter like she's a sack of potatoes.

Spenser is supported by the leather backing of the seat, and Donovan climbs in front to her, his father in front of him. The power in the engine makes Spenser's teeth chatter, her heart starts to pound in her chest. There is way to much power in this machine than in any normal scooter, and how he heck does it even fly?

"So are you a half blood?"

"Yup, I'm pops kid," Donovan says over the rumble of the bike, "hold on tight, lady we can't stop to get you if you fall off."

"What do you mean, why not?"

"Pop's the god of the east wind, and the east wind only goes east," Donovan says.

Then the scooter shot into the sky.

"AHHHHH," Spenser could feel herself screaming, she thinks that her backpack flew form her arms, the wind stinging her face and making it feel raw. She is aware, somehow, that there is nothing but air under them, and then they hit a cloud which sends water and freezing ice formations touched her cheeks. "Holy sh-"

"Watch your language, lady!" Donovan tells her, but he is laughing, throwing his hands in the air, his whole face relaxed in happiness. Spenser dares to look down. She wishes immediately that she hadn't. Nothing but liquid clouds and the flying territories of the states are below them.

Spenser wonders why Donovan isn't afraid to fall. She is so scared that she doesn't feel scared, she simply grips her bronze skillet in her arms and closes her eyes against Donovan's back, and she prayed. Please, please whoever is out there, don't let her fall. Please, wherever this camp is, don't make her suffer in getting there.

That's when she hears them.

Now, Spenser is better at hearing than most. She has a keen sense of smell, a good sense of direction, a brilliant ability to get herself into tons of trouble. When she hears the high pitched wail form behind them, she is sure that the others heard it too. Eurus is a god, so of course he heard it. But when she looks, they hadn't seemed to have noticed. She has this foreboding feeling that there is a horrible trouble waiting for her, and so she turns around carefully, slowly, in her seat to glance behind them.

Black cloud like figures come barreling towards the scooter. Spenser gripped Donovan's shoulder, and he glances over to see them. His smile widens. "We're about to have some fun, lady" and then he knocks his father on the shoulder. Spenser wants to scream at him to keep his eyes on the road, so to speak, but the vehicle flew straight when Eurus turned around.

Eurus just laughs.

The first lighting bolt sunk past them, making the hair on her arms stand on end. She is terrified to look back around again, but a cold feeling touches her back, and she knows that those things are right behind her. Spenser turns around, just to get a face full of water.

The damn thing spit on her! She is so mad that suddenly nothing else matters, not falling or the ridiculous laughter that is bubbling from Eurus and his son. She can see the monsters eyes, like storm clouds and lighting, a face young and handsome but with some kind of twisted horror, like he's going to eat Spenser for breakfast.

To avoid being demon-storm-cloud food, Spenser raises the skillet, and in complete desperation brought it down upon the monsters reaching hand.

The thing howls, and Spenser is pushed to the side, and she scrambles to keep her seat before plummeting at least a thousand feet to the ground. She manages to hold onto one of the straps to the leather seat, but instead of pulling herself back to her place, she rotates.

Spenser isn't sure what's happening but she lets her body do what it will, and in one movement, she is sitting backwards on the scooter seat with her back against Donovan's. Her hand still clutched the skillet in a death grip, and she felt herself calm, focus, her eyes become sharper, her ears hear the very beat of the scooters gears, and Spenser is prepared to do battle with several storm spirits.

Storm spirits? How did she know that?

Spenser leaned forward with her chest pressed against the back of the seat, and she waited for the storm spirits to descend. It didn't take long. When the first one got particularly close, hissing something is some language that sounds like a blender, Spenser swing the skillet sideways and –whacked- him across the cheek.

He dissolved like campfire smoke. Spenser manages to stand on the metal on each side of the scooter. Donovan reared his head back and shouted, which sounded suspiciously like a battle cry.

Spenser tried not to think that she was standing on a freaking scooter flying thousands of feet in the air. Her hair whips at her face and neck, long tresses getting in the way of her vision. Her whole body feels hot with the action. When the next spirit flew towards her, she uses the flat of the skillet to slam his head downwards.

Spenser notices, now that her vision is sharper, that the bronze always seems to want to melt through the monster, but doesn't at the last minute. It feels to her as if the storm sprit is trying to reject the swing of the bronze, but fails in the end. The skillet isn't celestial bronze, after all.

Another storm spirit lunged on the side, and she smashes him in the nose with the butt of the skillet handle, she –cracks- the fourth one on the shoulder. Her breath tastes like iron, she thinks she bit her own tongue.

Eurus is laughing, "Good job, my dear! Nice hit! Throw 'em out the park!"

Spenser's whole body throws weight into her next hit, and finally another one dissolves. Lightning crackles against her shoulder, she feels the weight of a hand on her stomach, and she is almost thrown overboard.

Donovan catches Spenser by the tail of her jacket just as Spenser sees nothing but land below. Her insides jump to her throat, the skillet almost slips form her fingers, and she gets a face-full of cloud. The freezing water prickles at her skin and leaves white droplets of ice on her lashes.

Donovan tugs her back onto the scooter, and she grips the back of the seat like a lifeline.

"Hold on!" the bike then starts to descend, throwing her chest against the back of the seat and her voice rips out in a scream, her hair whipping around her as she sees nothing but the sky and hears the whistling as they start to fall. Donovan has his hands up in the air like this is a roller coaster ride. Spenser wonders how messy it would be to puke while falling.

They dip into a curve, tipping slightly sideways, and Spenser sees various green and grey blurs as they rush past the world at top speed. Then her whole body jumps, like they hit an air speedbump, and Spenser is aware of flying off the back of the motorcycle.

Words echo in her ear _, the east wind can only go east._

She hits the ground heavily and in one movement realizes that she is rolling down grass, dirt, and mud so thick her elbows dig inches deep as they try to stop her decent, causing her face to slam into the ground with the force of her fall. She hears a –snap- and then feels shaken to silence-a shock so sudden she forgets her own name. Her eyes close, and she knows nothing but black and red.


End file.
